1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an improved data processing system and, in particular, to a method and system for multi-computer data transferring. Still more particularly, the present invention provides a method and system for multi-user communication using instant messaging.
2. Description of Related Art
The receipt of unwanted communications is a common problem that is widely experienced by many people. These communications may originate from organizations or persons with which a user no longer wants to communicate, or these messages may be unsolicited commercial messages.
The recognition of the problem of unwanted communications first arose with respect to telemarketing in which telemarketers would use a person's telephone number as a communication identifier to send unwanted telephone solicitation offers. Email has became a significant communication medium, and due to the ease of generating thousands of copies of electronic messages, unwanted email communication has become a significant problem. In fact, the term “spam” has been coined for the multitudinous, unwanted, indiscriminate nature of broadcast commercial email messages.
Instant messaging is a relatively new communication medium that is gaining popularity among people and corporations. While instant messaging has a certain immediacy that provides timesaving advantages in communication, instant messaging has the same disadvantage as email concerning the ease of reproduction of electronic messages. Hence, spam has also become a problem within instant messaging systems.
One of the factors that causes this problem is the fact that after someone's communication identifier has been divulged, it can be used to send communications for as long as the communication identifier is valid, which is typically several years. People often keep telephone numbers and email addresses for several years due to the inconvenience, inability, or cost of changing these communication identifiers in a frequent manner to avoid unwanted communications. Thus, it is difficult to outmaneuver or outrun unwanted communications by hiding behind communication identifiers that are unknown to the originators of unwanted communications.
Due to the harassing nature of unwanted telephone solicitations and email spam, laws have been enacted to address aggressive telemarketers and email spammers. Laws concerning email spam are being broadened to cover other electronic communication mediums like instant messaging. However, due to the widespread and international nature of global communication, local or national laws have little effect in stopping entities that send unwanted communications across jurisdictional borders without regard to legal restrictions.
Telephone telemarketing is somewhat inherently limited based on the fact that long-distance telecommunication can have significant costs. Caller-ID and call-blocking mechanisms have allowed call recipients to control unwanted calls. In addition, due to the circuit-switching-based nature of telecommunication, it is almost impossible for an harassing telemarketer to remain anonymous.
However, the cost for sending electronic communication messages is often so low as to be almost negligible compared to other costs of operating a commercial enterprise. Moreover, due to the packet-switching-nature of the Internet, an originator of electronic messages can forward messages through so-called anonymizing servers or use similar tricks in an attempt to remain anonymous. Since email spam and instant messaging spam can be generated with insignificant costs and through almost anonymous and extrajurisdictional means, spam can be assumed to be a long-term problem.
One solution to the email spamming problem has been the implementation of blocking lists based on email address, which block the delivery of all email messages from a certain email address. Another solution has been to filter email messages by scanning them for undesirable content. Although effective, some previous solutions allow delivery of unwanted email messages to a user who then has the burden of filtering or blocking the messages, while other previous solutions require a substantial transfer of control or privacy from the user to a service provider that performs filtering or blocking actions on behalf of the user.
These solutions for email spam are useful, but they also rely on the delayed nature of email message delivery. Email messages are sent to an inbox and then delivered to a user at some subsequent point in time, and the filtering operations can be performed on incoming email messages even though the filtering operations may delay the processing of the email messages to a small degree.
Similar filtering operations can be performed on messages that are transmitted through an instant messaging system. For example, an instant message recipient can block the receipt of messages from certain senders or can allow the receipt of messages only from certain senders. In addition, many instant messaging systems provide a means for a user to indicate an away-from-my-desk status or a do-not-disturb status or to control which other users are notified or can discover that the user is currently online.
Instant messaging, though, has an immediate, interactive characteristic that has not been employed by previous privacy solutions. Therefore, it would be advantageous to have a method and system for providing a user with the ability to selectively control the delivery of messages in an instant messaging system that employs the interactive nature of instant messaging. It would be particularly advantageous to maximize the flexibility of user control or administrative control.